Kadavertreue
by Memaiko
Summary: She would follow him down to the end, even if it meant becoming Death itself. (Oneshot;following the Accomplice Ending of 'Persona 4 Golden')


The coverpicture of this story was drawn by me :)

* * *

There hadn't been any sentiment of regret on Narukami's mind.

In fact, she didn't feel anything in the particular moment she burned Adachi's letter and sealed her fate as his partner in crime.

It had been right to protect him – a guilty serial killer and at the same time a close friend. The sound of shattering glass confirmed it. A familiar warm feeling pooled through her body as the tarot card of the Jester gently floated in front of her eyes, emitting a radiant shine.

 _I am thou._

 _Thou art I._

Yui Narukami has forged a bond that cannot be broken.

Adachi had thrown her against the wall, his nails penetrating her wrists until she felt the damp blood running down her arms. "Why did you do that? Why did you sacrifice all your precious bonds for me? Tell me!"

Madness had distorted his features, his friendly smile vanished altogether with the charade he had kept up all this time to deceive everyone around him - and she was sure that his eyes had shone in a hue of gold for a moment.

Narukami wanted to reply, but no words of this world could justify her actions. She was at a point of no return. At the mercy of a sociopath.

The betrayal of friends and family.  
Unforgivable.

She slowly leaned forward, locking her lips with his.  
"Because only you understand me," she breathed into the kiss.  
There was no way back.  
Never more.  
"We are both fools of this world."

The descent began.

When they lay side by side, skin pressed to skin, glistening with sweat from the love they had shared before and the heavy weight of guilt resting on their shoulders, Adachi started to laugh. His croaked voice eerily echoed through the scruffy room. From the corner of her eye Narukami could see the red scarf hanging from the noose next to the bed. It was lightly swaying in the breeze, taunting her to come and put it around her neck to see how much life meant to her at this point.

"Do you know the tale of Izanagi and Izanami?"

His chapped lips brushed her earlobe ever so slightly. Adachi's whispered words dripped down her mind, slowly and sickly sweet like honey.

"They were a divine couple. When Izanami died while giving birth, Izanagi visited the underworld Yomi to retrieve her. Izanami told him to wait and to not look at her. Guess what he did: He discovered that his once so beautiful Izanami was a rotten corpse by now, so Izanagi was in shock and returned home without his wife. Izanami was enraged and tried to catch her husband, but he sealed the entrance to Yomi. She told him that every day she would take 1000 lives as to Izanagi responded that every day he would give the world 1500 new lives."

A kiss to her naked arm. To her blank bone.

"You remind me of her."

Two cold pieces of steel in a marble puppet.

It felt wrong to look at her former friends with those dead eyes of hers. She was afraid to spill maggots on the place they had used all this time to reunite and think about the investigation when she would drag her rotting body to Junes. Soiling the ground where she had established their bonds had to be avoided at all cost. That's why she never told anyone about her arrival at this tranquil village she had come to love so dearly and drown so selfishly into chaos.

Anyone, except for Adachi.

Narukami didn't dare to receive calls from her uncle. He had probably seen her wandering around town in the dense fog, but whenever he miraculously managed to catch her at a crossing and talk to her, she stiffened. It had become too hard to talk to her blood related family. Sooner or later she felt the power of the Hierophant lessen. Dojima's arcana shattered by the time she told him that she would never return to his house again.

"What about Nanako?", he asked her furiously. There was pain in his voice and maybe also despair. Narukami had looked right through him when she gave her dry answer.

"She'll be alright without me."

Narukami had decided on this choice for both her uncle and cousin's sake. Spending time with a dead almost daughter and dead almost big sister seemed to cruel of a punishment for these kind people. She had to destroy the budding bonds before it was too late. Nanako was too innocent and too pure to keep in touch with a sinister goddess like Narukami.

She wanted to isolate herself from the miserable world, from the pain that bonds carried along.

All this time Narukami had searched for the truth with the Investigation Team in the TV world, when the truth had always been right in front of her eyes.

Adachi's view of the world was the only truth. And now she was finally able to understand him fully.

The world truly was full of shit.

With every of Adachi's touch, she corroded a little more. Her skin burnt under his fingertips and the muzzle of his gun between her legs let her cry out in pain and pleasure, her neck covered in blue petals where he pressed his thumbs neatly above her windpipe. Every night was a game of life and death for them. The sole purpose of the dangerous play was to evade the omnipresence of boredom and lastly also an opportunity to kill time.

Izanagi and Izanami had an eternity to spend with each other after all.

Narukami cowered on the ragged couch one day. With her bony arms wrapped around her legs, she threw short gazes to the door once in a while, never uttering a single syllable. Adachi noticed when he pulled his eyes away from the flickering TV screen in front of him. The signal was really bad recently.

"Are you afraid to go outside?", he asked mockingly. She didn't have to turn her skull to know he was smirking at her.

"The fog plays with people's minds. Who needs the truth anyways? It's so much easier to live life without knowing about the world's problems. Without having to care about anything. That's why stupid people are the happiest. Ignorance is a bliss."

And she trusted him. Every word that left his mouth was doubtlessly true to her.

The fog would devour every ounce of Narukami's ugly self. It was hard to see through the haze on the streets, harder to talk to other people. It even was too dangerous for children to play outside. The town had become quieter and its inhabitants more secluded.

Yes, she was afraid. Afraid that people would stop and stare and point in disgust at her rotten body. She was afraid they could see her ugly ivory bones and her ugly black intestines. People would notice the stagnating smell of her fouling flesh and insides and the bugs creeping out of her empty eye holes.

However, when Izanagi was here, her anxiety subsided.

Narukami clutched Adachi's hand tightly as they walked down the foggy pathway. She could see perfectly fine through the eternal fog that clouded the town and she was sure that her partner felt the same way.

Her...partner.

Strange, how easy it has become to think about Adachi the same way as it had been with Yosuke.

Then again, Adachi was the only person left in this world whom she could rely on. The only bond she had allowed to bloom. The only other living being besides her who knew about her true self.

Her salvation and her demise.

In the end the fog had been victorious.  
The beings that wandered through the neglected streets could no longer be called human.  
They were shadows of their former selves. Literally.

Instead of liberation, she had brought death to everyone.

Here they sat, the divine couple, united in the misty veil of Inaba – or rather the shadow of Inaba, Magatsu Mandala. The real world and the TV-world had merged into one.

Narukami sat in front of her throne, the former table of the Dojima family, where she had spent some of her happiest moments as a human being. Adachi had placed his head in her lap and she let her milky, long bones glide through his dark hair.  
"Boring," she heard him mutter. "This world is so rotten". He looked up at her through half-closed eyelids, the glow of his golden irises shining through the mist. "We spared it more suffering. Right, Izanami? "

She had no mouth to speak anymore. Only a skeleton. But they understood each other without words.

 _I am thou._

 _Thou art I._

Both fools had ended their journey.  
And in the end, only their own truth mattered.

* * *

It's been a while since I've written something again and idk why my fingers decided to type this.


End file.
